Organization: Definition, Skills, & Ideas For Your Life

By Kelsey Schultz, Ph.D. Candidate
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
Organization is an essential part of a well-lived life. Keep reading to learn more about the importance of organization and how to organize your life.
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If you’ve ever had the experience of frantically searching for lost keys, rushing to a forgotten meeting, or struggling to articulate an idea amidst a storm of thoughts, you’re familiar with the importance of organization. Organizing the many varied aspects of your life can be challenging, but the sense of calm, competence, and well-being it provides makes the effort fully worth it. Let’s talk more about organization and how to get (and stay) organized.
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What Is Organization? (A Definition)

Organization is a broad term that can be used in many different contexts. For example, we might organize a drawer, a calendar, our thoughts, or a group of people. In the most general sense, organization can be understood as the systematic and thoughtful ordering of things in space and/or time that turns a collection of pieces into a functional whole (Cwerner & Metcalfe, 2003).

Opposite of Organization

The opposite of organization is disorganization or disorder. Disorganization might look like a cluttered desk, regularly missing appointments, or having difficulty expressing your thoughts and ideas.

Why Organization Is Important

Organization is vital for productivity, efficiency, and our sense of well-being. For example, research has shown that a cluttered or disorganized office can have a negative impact on well-being and job satisfaction (Dao & Ferrari, 2020). By keeping our time and our space organized, we facilitate everything we hope to accomplish in a day. That is, when we aren’t spending time searching for lost items, rushing to get to a meeting we forgot, or feeling stressed and overwhelmed by a mess, we can use that time to engage in our favorite hobbies or relax with our loved ones.

Benefits of Staying Organized

In addition to having more time for fun and relaxation, there are numerous other benefits of staying organized. Below are just a few of the many benefits staying organized can offer.

Reduce stress​
It might go without saying that disorder can cause frustration, lost time, unwelcome delays, and missed opportunities – all of which can increase our stress levels (Elkin, 2013). Staying organized can help prevent all of these stressful scenarios. 

Better sleep
An organized schedule allows us to quit work on time and create a bedtime routine that facilitates quality sleep.

Healthier diet
When our schedules and our kitchens are disorganized, picking healthy snacks and preparing healthy meals becomes infinitely more challenging. Waiting until the last minute to decide on what to eat for dinner often results in fast food, take-out, or easily accessible snacks like chips or cereal. Organization provides the opportunity to plan ahead and prepare healthy meals and snacks

Decreases overwhelm
Author and Life coach, Jackie Woodside, has found that disorganization and clutter are the primary energy drains people experience in their day-to-day (Woodside, 2015). She notes that mess and disorder can weigh us down and often lead to negative self-talk. Feeling drained, heavy, and negative about yourself are all major contributors to overwhelm. Staying organized relieves us of these negative feelings and gives us the energy needed to overcome stressors that could lead to overwhelm.

Increased productivity and efficiency
In addition to the time that can be wasted looking for misplaced documents or other important items, the distraction that is caused by mess can reduce our ability to be productive and work efficiently. Keeping our workspace tidy and organized can go a long way in improving our workflow.

Organizational Skills

If you aren’t naturally good at organizing, don’t worry. Organization requires a particular skill set that we may need to cultivate before we can get organized and stay that way. Below are a few important skills for organizing. Take a look at each one and consider which skills you might want to work on as you begin to organize your life.

Problem-solving​
Organizing is, at its core, a form of problem-solving. It requires awareness of what isn’t working, identification of a solution, and development of an action plan for implementing the chosen solution.

Attention to detail
Organizing in a way that is effective and sustainable necessitates attention to the details of your space, how you spend your time, and relevant patterns of behavior.

Creativity
Developing solutions to organizational challenges often requires and always benefits from a little creativity. For example, creativity can help you effectively maximize the use of small spaces, balance tight schedules, and develop systems that will work for you in the long run.  

Boundaries
Often, our lives become disorganized because we lack boundaries. We might overburden ourselves with work commitments and social events because we have trouble saying no. Similarly, we might struggle to keep our home orderly because we have not set firm boundaries regarding how our space is treated. Being able to set boundaries around our time and our space is an important skill for getting and staying organized.

Understanding how you relate to your things 
It is said that organizing is more about the intense and complicated emotional attachments people have to their belongings than it is about ordering material possessions (Lane, 2015). While this understanding of organization is arguable, investigating the ways in which we find ourselves attached to our things is an important part of developing systems of organization. In other words, it is useful to ask ourselves why we hold on to certain things and how we might encourage ourselves to let go of them.

Organization Ideas

Organization Ideas for Organizing Your Home
  • Declutter by category – Professional organizer, Marie Kondo, suggests that the most effective way to declutter is to do so by category in the following order: clothing, books, paper, miscellaneous items, and sentimental pieces. Sort through all of your items belonging to each category and keep only the items that are useful or that spark joy.
  • Create a home organization routine – Creating a routine is a great way to ensure that you stay organized. An organization routine might be something you perform weekly, such as sorting your mail, or something that you do less often, like donating clothes once per year.
  • Stack storage – Storing items in stackable bins is an easy and effective way to maximize space while making sure that your stored items are still easily accessible.
  • Use a pegboard – A pegboard is a unique and flexible way to store everything from kitchen utensils to exercise equipment. Pegboards allow you to move shelves around to fit your needs as you gain, discard, or replace items.
  • Furniture with built-in storage – Getting furniture that can also function as storage space is another great way to get organized and maximize space. For example, beds with built-in drawers are a great way to organize if you are low on closet space.

Organization Ideas for Organizing Your Life

  • Mind map – Mind maps are a way to visually organize your ideas by category. To create a mind map, start with a central topic, such as new years’ resolutions, and write it down. Next identify primary categories related to the central topic. For example, your new years’ resolutions might be to get in shape, read more, and spend more time with friends. After writing out each of the primary categories, identify the important elements of each one. In other words, analyze each primary category and determine the important details. In the new years’ resolutions example, you might define what you mean by “get in shape”, articulate what your specific goals are, and write out the steps you plan to take to accomplish those goals.
  • Bullet journal – A bullet journal is an organization method designed by Ryder Carroll that helps with organizing schedules, to-do lists, brainstorms, and reminders. You can check out the Bullet Journal YouTube page for ideas on how to use a bullet journal.

Organization Ideas for Organizing Your Time

  • Create a list of priorities – Clearly identifying the things that are most important to you can be a useful place to start if you are struggling to organize your time. When putting a schedule together, start with your top priority and move down the list. Once you’ve set aside time for the most important things you can fill in the rest of your schedule with everything else.
  • Do a time audit – A time audit is an exercise in which you record what you do in a day that helps you to better understand how you are spending your time. One way to conduct a time audit is to write out everything you plan to do in a day on a notecard and check off each item as you complete it. On the back of the notecard, record everything you did but didn’t plan to do. Do this every day for a week to help reveal patterns of behavior that might be consuming more time than you realized. Once you notice these patterns, you can take action to change them.
  • Use the Pomodoro Method – The Pomodoro method is a time management technique that promotes focus and helps break down complex projects into smaller, more manageable tasks. To use this method, all you need is a to-do list and a timer. Simply select a task and set your timer for 25 minutes. During these 25 minutes, your focus should be solely on the task at hand. Once the 25 minutes is up, take a 5-minute break. After 4 blocks of 25 minutes, take a longer break (about 15 to 30 minutes).

Organization Tips

Getting organized and staying organized are not necessarily easy tasks. The organizational strategies we employ may not always work or may be disrupted by life changes. It’s important to pay attention to what is and what is not working for you and to be ready to change your strategy when necessary.  

Organization Tips for Organizing Space
  • Take a regular inventory of your things – Go through your closets, cabinets, and drawers at least once per year and take note of what you have. This is also a good opportunity to discard items that no longer serve a purpose.
  • One in one out – Discard an item for every new item brought into the home. For example, if you bought a new pair of sweatpants, it’s time to get rid of an old pair.
  • Everything should have a home – Everything should have a place where it belongs. For example, the tape might live in an office supplies drawer and wrapping paper might live in a seasonal items container. Staying organized becomes much easier when everything has a home.

Organization Tips for Organizing Time
  • Try not to multitask – Studies show that multitasking is ineffective and can actually deplete our ability to focus. You can keep your time organized and your energy focused by performing one task at a time.
  • Set time limits for tasks – Setting time limits for your daily tasks is a helpful way to ensure that you actually get to everything you planned to do. Without time limits, you could spend all day on one task and disrupt your schedule for the rest of the week.
  • Group similar tasks - Grouping activities by categories such as urgency, importance, regularity, and challenge, is a great way to decide the order in which you perform your daily tasks. For example, you might start your day with all of the most urgent tasks and leave all of the easiest tasks for the evening.

Quotes on Organization

  • “Clutter is nothing more than postponed decisions.” -- Barbara Hemphill
  • “Bottom line is, if you do not use it or need it, it’s clutter, and it needs to go.” -- Charisse Ward
  • “The only difference between a mob and a trained army is organization.” -- Calvin Coolidge 
  • “First comes thought; then organization of that thought into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality.” — Napoleon Hill
  • “Being organized isn’t about getting rid of everything you own or trying to become a different person: it’s about living the way you want to live, but better.” — Andrew Mellen
  • “Organizing is what you do before you do something so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.” — A. A. Milne
  • “A good system shortens the road to the goal.” — Orison Swett Marden
  • “Organizing has to be a 12-month endeavor.” — Tom Perez
  • “The obvious rule of efficiency is you don’t want to spend more time organizing than it’s worth.” — Daniel Levitin
  • “For every minute spent in organizing, an hour is earned.” — Benjamin Franklin
  • “Organization isn’t about perfection. It’s about efficiency. Reducing stress and clutter, saving time and money, and improving your overall quality of life.” — Christina Scalise
  • “Having a simplified, uncluttered home is a form of self-care.” — Emma Scheib
  • “Order is a very high consciousness principle. Everything in the universe is supported and sustained at the highest level through order.” -- Jackie Woodside

Articles Related to Organization

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Organization​

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Organization

Organization is critical for our well-being. It reduces stress, improves our health, and increases our productivity. Though organizing the various aspects of our lives is not always simple, a little creative problem-solving and helpful tips can help us achieve order and tranquility in a world of chaos. For more on how to organize your life, check out this video:

Video: How to Be More Organized & Productive | 10 Habits for Life Organization

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